The Dish

Here’s an email that’s well worth reprinting:

I’m a straight male nurse. I guess once upon a time that was kind of an oxymoron; of course it no longer is, as nursing has become widely regarded as the desirable profession which it is.
Anyhow … I work in an ICU in Florida. Recently had an admission, a Canadian fellow about my age (I’m 59) who was vacationing with his partner. Very very sick. For some reason not known–his kidneys suddenly failed. Without the ability to make urine, fluid built up in him and eventually filled his lungs. He’d entered what we call MultiSystem Organ Failure (his kidneys, his lungs) and thinking that the origin of his problem was gangrene in his bowels, he’d had surgery on his belly.

Andrew, I’ve been in this business 25 years. I’ve seen families that do well and families that don’t. Believe me – this gentleman and his partner were a family that did well. The emotional connection that comforted and strengthened my Pt was as strong as any that I have seen in my career. The responsiblity that his partner took in dealing with ‘power of attorney’ tasks was wonderful.

With the strength of love behind him, he has made a wonderful recovery. Of course, dialysis and modern medical care worked their magic. But I know the difference that love makes, too. And he had it. These two gay men were so completely “married” that it was inspiring and beautiful to see. It made me want to pass on to you this story. It made me want to add my voice to yours, that “gay marriage” denied is a terrible injury done by our society to a significant group of our brothers and sisters. A decent society would not tolerate withholding recognition and blessings on these unions.

Yes: a decent society. It’s here, but buried beneath fear, prejudice and misguided faith. But it is emerging, and will triumph.

YOO INTERVIEWED: He says his legacy of legalized “cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment” in the war on terror was essentially ratified by the election of 2004. Money quote:

We had a national presidential election in the middle, right in the middle of all of the disclosures of this, in the middle of this war. And people could have elected Bush out of office if they thought this was improper and that the costs outweighed the benefits. They could have replaced –

Gillian Findlay: DO YOU THINK THAT ELECTION WAS A REFERENDUM ON THE TORTURE POLICY?

John Yoo: … it was certainly a referendum on the war on terrorism.

Gillian Findlay: SO YOU THINK HIS VICTORY VINDICATES EVERYTHING THAT’S HAPPENED?

John Yoo: No. I’ve used that – if people disagree with that policy, they certainly could have voted him out of office and voted the Republicans out of the House and the Senate. And there’s no doubt the war on terrorism was front and centre, the primary issue that was being debated in the presidential election. And I’d point out that Senator Kerry could have raised this issue if he’d wanted to and attacked President Bush about it, as some you know some other people did. He certainly chose not to. I think if the people didn’t approve of the policies – that’s what elections are for.

A vote for Bush was, in Yoo’s eyes, a democratic ratification of the end of America’s adherence to humane treatment of military detainees. And Kerry was complicit. That latter point is certainly indisputable.

I’ve been traveling on planes and dealing with a nasty bout of stomach flu. I’ll be back when I’m feeling better.

Amazingly, the dissidents within the CIA are leaking their interrogation techniques. We finally have detailed evidence that the U.S., under this president, practices “waterboarding.” Here’s the official CIA definition:

6. Water Boarding: The prisoner is bound to an inclined board, feet raised and head slightly below the feet. Cellophane is wrapped over the prisoner’s face and water is poured over him. Unavoidably, the gag reflex kicks in and a terrifying fear of drowning leads to almost instant pleas to bring the treatment to a halt.

According to the sources, CIA officers who subjected themselves to the water boarding technique lasted an average of 14 seconds before caving in. They said al Qaeda’s toughest prisoner, Khalid Sheik Mohammed, won the admiration of interrogators when he was able to last between two and two-and-a-half minutes before begging to confess.

“The person believes they are being killed, and as such, it really amounts to a mock execution, which is illegal under international law,” said John Sifton of Human Rights Watch.

The Wall Street Journal believes that this isn’t “anything close” to “torture.” What do you think?

“WE DO NOT ‘TORTURE'” II: A reader emails some details from the past:

“I know that this comparison is automatically derided as stupid hyperbole, as we are the army of freedom, not tyranny, but just look at this:

The icy vat method proved to be the fastest way to drop the body temperature. The selections were made of young healthy Jews or Russians. They were usually stripped naked and prepared for the experiment. An insulated probe which measured the drop in the body temperature was inserted into the rectum … The victim was then placed in the vat of cold water and started to freeze. It was learned that most victims lost consciousness and died when the body temperature dropped to 25 C.

I know it’s a clear violation of Godwin’s law, but how can a mind not make the comparison when reading your discussion of the Navy Seals’ alleged use of freezing water as an interrogation technique? Money quote [from a left-wing radio station]:

‘When the Navy SEALS would interrogate people, they were using ice water to lower the body temperature of the prisoner and they would take his rectal temperature in order to make sure that he didn’t die. I didn’t see this, but that’s what many, many prisoners told me who came out of the SEAL Compound, and I also heard that from a guard who was working in our detention facility, who was present during an interrogation that the SEAL had done… [W]e used hypothermia a lot. It was very cold up in Mosul at that time, so we – it was also raining a lot, so we would keep the prisoner outside, and they would have a polyester jumpsuit on and they would be wet and cold, and freezing. But we weren’t inducing hypothermia with ice water like the SEALS were. But, you know, maybe the SEALS were doing it better than we were, because they were actually even controlling it with the thermometer, but we weren’t doing that.’

Makes me want to fucking cry.”

I can only hope that these serious allegations are untrue, but at this point, does the Pentagon really get the benefit of the doubt? And remember that, according to John Yoo in his famous White House memo, the Nazi technique – because it was designed to kill people (as a medical experiment for the war effort) – was indeed legally “torture,” illegal for the U.S., and even the vice-president draws the line at murder. The Navy Seals’ alleged technique, because it was carefully monitored not actually to kill people, and was aimed at extracting intelligence, is therefore not “torture.” So we’re fine. As the president reminds us in his always-careful locution, we’re “legal.” We do not “torture.” Repeat after me: “We do not ‘torture’.” Makes me want to fucking cry.

“Even disagreeing with his position, you had to enjoy Murtha on Meet the Press this morning. Politicians who actually learn information and speak/act on it, instead of the verbal vomit that are ‘talking points,’ are a rare breed these days. Just refreshing to hear something that has not been vetted by Howard Dean, Terry McAuliffe, Ed Gillespie, or Ken Mehlman… “

As I have said, I disagree with Murtha strongly. But the instinctive attempt to belittle or smear him by the Republicans was as dumb as it was predictable.

I’m amused by emailers calling me a Bush-hater. He drives me crazy, I disagree strongly with some of his decisions, I think he’s been a disaster for conservatism, blah blah blah, but I find it very hard to hate him, or even dislike him. A man who gets trapped in a press conference by locked doors and responds, “I was trying to escape. Obviously, it didn’t work,” is not someone I find easy to hate. He did look shattered on the television, however. I hope he gets some sleep on the plane.

I presume this is false until proven otherwise. But we can hope, can’t we? Maybe these barbarian theocrats have finally done themselves in. The darkest hour and all that …

John Burns has been a pretty reliable guide to reality in Iraq. His piece today makes sobering reading. The next phase looks messy, but not necessarily more disastrous than what has happened up till now. (Yeah, I know that’s not exactly a high standard). I’m hanging in there with David Brooks. It’s not intellectually easy to continue supporting a war when you’ve lost faith in the honesty and competence of the president who’s leading it, but what choice do we have? There are other good people struggling to make this work: Casey, Rice, Khalilzad, McCain; and the thousands of troops who are risking their lives in this project. They key is to grasp how little we know, how badly we’ve screwed up, but also not to throw in the towel when, in fact, there is still a chance for leveraging the current situation to our and to Iraqis’ advantage. One thing I wish were more insisted upon. It’s not just that we have no interest in seeing Iraq degenerate into a brutal civil and possibly regional war. By removing Saddam, we created this vacuum. We own it. We have a moral responsibility to see this through.

QUOTE OF THE DAY: “These mullahs fucked up this country. The country is sick right now. I can’t live in a sick situation. For that reason, I couldn’t vote yesterday. I’d give my life for America, but not for Iran. Because, if I work a lot there, I may achieve something. In Iran, when you want something, plan for it, work your ass off for it, you cannot make it and have no clear future.” – young Iranian, Arash, as reported in the current New Yorker in a splendid piece by Laura Secor (that is, alas, not available online). One fascinating nugget: in one of the world’s most repressive religious regimes, Iranians have the highest opiate addiction levels in the world. Opium is smoked as often and as casually as pot is in the United States. You want high levels of drug addiction? Get yourself a theocracy.

QUOTE OF THE DAY II: “I have never seen a Party so full of shit when it comes to supporting the military. They fight wars on the cheap and get people killed unnecessarily, instead of fighting with everything we’ve got under a coherant and cohesive strategy that ensures military victory. They let domestic politics trump military necessity, preferring to lie and shift the blame rather than address the problems and solve them like real men. They care about image rather than substance, empty rhetoric instead of courage, mediocrity instead of excellence, and machiavellian maneuvering instead of strong moral character. They have demonstrated nothing but contempt for us and for those that have served honorably in the past. They play us for suckers and weep crocodile tears at our deaths as their stock values rise. They are strangers to integrity and completely bereft of the basic values that we hold dear. They are without honor. They can go to hell.
If this is what Republicans mean by ‘supporting the troops,’ then they can by all means support the insurgents. We’d have a free and democratic Iraq by the end of the year.” – blogger “Stryker,” on the blog, “Digital Warfighter.” (By the way, this is the same guy who used to blog on the SgtStryker military blog. He was strongly pro-war. He’s just become enraged by the way it has been conducted.)

Krauthammer and “intelligent design.” In case you missed it.

There is a big difference between withdrawing troops when we believe that the Iraqi security forces are capable of taking over, and declaring defeat and withdrawing them according to a fixed time-table. That’s why I oppose Jack Murtha’s position, oppose the straw-man amendment voted yesterday in the House, and support McCain’s basic line. But it is nevertheless interesting, isn’t it, that General Casey, who has been doing by all accounts as good a job as he can, has already offered Rumsfeld a plan for troop reduction next year, according to CNN. I wonder when the GOP sheep in Congress will start calling Casey a coward.

“I was being told by my leaders that these people were not enemy prisoners of war, and therefore, we could really sort of do whatever we wanted, but I don’t know if that’s even true. I don’t know.” – former U.S. Army interrogator Specialist Tony Lagouranis, explaining how the detainee abuses throughout the theater of war were ordered and condoned by the chain of command, which, of course, includes someone known as the commander-in-chief. The official line from the Bush administration is and was that all prisoners in Iraq were covered by the Geneva Conventions. They were and are lying. From the interview with lefty Amy Goodman on a lefty radio station:

TONY LAGOURANIS: When the Navy SEALS would interrogate people, they were using ice water to lower the body temperature of the prisoner and they would take his rectal temperature in order to make sure that he didn’t die. I didn’t see this, but that’s what many, many prisoners told me who came out of the SEAL Compound, and I also heard that from a guard who was working in our detention facility, who was present during an interrogation that the SEAL had done.

AMY GOODMAN: Where is the SEAL Compound.

TONY LAGOURANIS: It was in the same place. It was at the Mosul airport, but I never actually went inside the compound myself.

AMY GOODMAN: Did you use hypothermia as a means of interrogating?

TONY LAGOURANIS: We did. Yeah, we used hypothermia a lot. It was very cold up in Mosul at that time, so we — it was also raining a lot, so we would keep the prisoner outside, and they would have a polyester jumpsuit on and they would be wet and cold, and freezing. But we weren’t inducing hypothermia with ice water like the SEALS were. But, you know, maybe the SEALS were doing it better than we were, because they were actually even controlling it with the thermometer, but we weren’t doing that.

Who were these detainees? Money quote:

We all talked about it. I discussed this with my team leader all the time. The people I was working with all the time. You know part of the problem back then too, is that I was still under the impression that we were getting prisoners who had intel – who had intel to give us, and you know, I still thought that these were bad guys.
I was believing the intelligence reports that came in with the prisoner. I believed the detainee units, but later it became clear to me that they weren’t — they were picking up just farmers, you know, like these guys were totally innocent and that’s why we weren’t getting intel. And it just made what we were doing, like, seem even more cruel.

Torturing the innocent. No useful intelligence. Alienating our allies. Setting back our cause. And still Cheney won’t relent.